Tuesday, February 22, 2011

The media and the think tank community is made up of chicken shit
cowards who refuse to ask why the US Navy sails circles around the Gulf
of Aden while piracy gets worse, and under no circumstances will anyone
criticize the Obama administration for an aimless, endless perpetual
violence policy in the Indian Ocean. What is the point of continuous
military operations without objectives?

ABU DHABI - The United Arab Emirates is set to turn a number of its
Sikorsky Black Hawks into gunships in a deal with the U.S. helicopter
maker worth nearly 1 billion Arab Emirate dirhams ($272 million).

The
announcement of a plan to buy weaponization kits for 23 of its Black
Hawk UH-60M helicopters was the pick of a 4 billion Arab Emirate dirham
order bonanza unveiled by the UAE armed forces at the IDEX show Feb. 21
in Abu Dhabi.

An attack copter that does double duty as a transport? It took several years but it seems that the US has finally achieved what the Russians did many years ago. We have our own Mi-24...Columbia has been using a version of this for quite some time too...the only remaining question is whether the US Navy or Army will acquire a few kits. It would seem a natural for the Navy. With the focus on littoral combat, these would seem an ideal addition to the fleet.

Navy to buy new aircraft

Published on Tue Feb 22 13:07:21 GMT 2011

THE
Royal Navy is looking to buy a fleet of maritime patrol aircraft for up
to £1 billion just weeks after the Ministry of Defence scrapped the new
Nimrod aircraft at a cost of £3.6 billion.The MoD confirmed last week that the
navy wanted to buy its own maritime patrol aircraft to track enemy
submarines to replace the Nimrods, which are being broken up for scrap.The
new RAF Nimrod MRA4s had not even come into service when the prime
minister announced last October that as part of the strategic defence
review he was scrapping Nimrod.The navy, which was furious that
RAF bosses had agreed to get rid of Nimrod at a time of increased
submarine activity, has already set up a team to buy a replacement and
ensure that it is flown by the Fleet Air Arm. The programme is being run
by Commodore Simon Kings with a team made up of naval officers.

If this is true and the plan is actually carried out then the British public will go ape! This will be the ultimate boondoggle.

The XF-87 was the last aircraft built by Curtiss Aircraft.
The specification originally called for a twin-engine, single-place
fighter, which evolved into an attack aircraft (XA-43) and finally to a
quad-jet, twin-place, all-weather, high-altitude fighter. Two prototype
XF-87s were built (S/N 45-59600 and 46-522), the second of which was
modified to the sole XF-87A.

The XF-87 was designed for an innovative nose turret capable of
swiveling in a wide arc around the axis of flight; however, the turret
was never actually installed on the XF-87.

The very large fighter was severely underpowered by four J34 turbojets
and was redesigned for two J47 turbojets (XF-87A). A production order
for 58 XF-87As and 30 RF-87s was canceled before any aircraft were
constructed.